As I may have mentioned, all of this researching and the information that I present here is an attempt to flesh out the world in which my stories take place (I promise I'll get them to the general public when they are ready). Utilizing language to transcribe the fruits of your imagination is a difficult business at best. Add to this a layer of Medieval style Fantasy and we impose certain limitations on language. Using turns of phrase in Fantasy writing can be an especially tricky thing. Idiom is a shorthand allowing access to a wide range of emotions and understanding, but is not always appropriate for a given setting. Obviously, suggesting that a madman has "faulty wiring" won't fly, but does the term "won't fly" fit if humans don't do it?
It's not an easy question and just because it doesn't exactly fit in your setting doesn't mean it is necessarily wrong to use it. I just love thinking about where old phrases might have come from and it's my blog, so here we go.
Referring to someone as a "whipping boy" refers to a very specific cultural moment. In 15th and 16th Century England, the divine heirs to the throne could not be physically disciplined, so they had a close companion who took the punishment for them. The idea was that the heir would not wish to see their friend chastised for a royal mistake. While modern usage (as a scapegoat, which has its own interesting history) differs from the original meaning of the phrase, there should be some cultural history in the world it's used that makes this term appropriate to the user.
"Three strikes (and you're out)" is a phrase that has crept into the vernacular, but seems to have a pretty specific origin. My understanding of it is as a baseball term. I've often heard it used when disciplining children. More recently, it has been adopted by law enforcement in an effort to give offenders more than a second chance, but to still not be too lenient. I've spent enough time in other countries to know that baseball is not quite as well known in the rest of the world. "Strikes" are otherwise connected to violence and not general misbehavior. Honestly, there are a host of sports related sayings that really don't translate, with some more obvious than others.
There are many terms taken from history that use the name of a specific class or people as stereotypes. Patricians and Plebeians are social rankings from Ancient Rome. The Vandals were a Germanic tribe, as were the Visigoths (was it just my mom who referred to people with bad manners as such?). Some words are so deeply enmeshed in modern English that they are not generally recognized (vandal), but others remain clear cultural references which might not exist in the history of your world.
When you mention "The Prodigal Son,"everyone gets what you mean. Well... sort of. As I was reminded a while ago, "prodigal" doesn't mean "long absent," it means "wasteful." The second difficulty relates to this being a Biblical reference and more specifically a parable of Jesus'. While it is not an essential element of faith, it does connect to the idea of absolute forgiveness. There are no consequences following this wasteful son's return, except for the responsible brother's jealousy (for which the responsible brother is reprimanded). It's certainly possible for you to include a culture where forgiveness is a strong element, but it doesn't seem all that common in the genre.
A garter snake and a water moccasin are both named after articles of clothing. How each got their names, I couldn't really say, but if your people have never used garters, why use it to name your wildlife? I understand that mentioning a "small non-venomous snake" is not as immersive as a garter snake slipping through the tall grass, but find a different way to say it. With that one, I'm probably nit picking, as you might not bother to mention the use of garters in your setting (like you might not mention the use of other types of underwear, or even the presence of nits in the community). All I'm saying is that names like these have connections to history and culture. When you use them, you import certain elements along with them.
I'm certainly not a fanatic about eliminating parts of my vocabulary to maintain internal consistency. In my world without a moon, I wouldn't hesitate to call a madman a lunatic, but I wouldn't say a woman was getting her "moon blood." Every word has to come from somewhere and some words have been more thoroughly incorporated into English than others, but you need to be careful. It's an extremely fine line between immersing the audience with a detail and jarring them with something out of place. The gray area is enormous and varies from person to person. Most people don't care, but I might have difficulty with someone flagellating themselves in a world that has never known Flagellants.
Whipping Boy - http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/whipping-boy.html
Garter - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garter_%28stockings%29
Flagellant - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellant
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